BALM FOR "INTERESTING TIMES"
Knitting is one of my “balms”…
There is a curse falsely attributed to the Chinese, “May you live in interesting times." (Interestingly, Wikipedia says the closest actual Chinese saying is, “Better to be a dog in peacetime, than a human in times of war.” Huh?) The curse is possibly attributable to a 19th century British statesman, but you get the drift - “interesting times” are times of turmoil, and not a kind thing to wish on anyone.
Hold on a moment, let’s shift gears. I started to write a monologue about coronavirus and its effect on our lives - everyone’s life. But I want to share something less DEPRESSING! Times are definitely very interesting at the moment. Coronavirus has killed folks living next door to other folks who test positive but have no symptoms at all. It has caused panic-buying of toilet paper (actually, I think this is pretty funny) and driven people into hiding. But I just need to be more upbeat while we’re under quarantine, so let me provide a handful of moving or humorous balms for your anxious spirit! Since you’re reading this, you’re on a device, so let’s start with a few videos.
Here’s a Saturday Night Live video - one of their pseudo soap operas. BTW, if you haven’t watched SNL’s The Californians, check it out. Meanwhile, watch The Sands of Modesto, which is very topical…and funny.
Tom Lehrer (yes - he’s still alive at age 91) wrote this song you’ll love, but back in 1980, it was probably written with STDs in mind. But you’ll see - it’s also very topical.
This short ad has nothing to do with anything, but it’s just so good, you’ll want to watch it a few times to appreciate the detailed thought that went into it. (I love the “whoo-hoo!” at 00:53.)
This is not a song, but an amazing instrument that you might have heard without knowing what it looked like.
Here’s a video of Leah Wollenberg and Laurie Lewis singing a beautiful song about being blue. Leah was in the variety show I hosted at the Freight & Salvage back in August. She plays fiddle beautifully, and here she is singing harmony with Laurie. (Leah! You should have told me you sing!)
I would be remiss in not sharing my own songs (yeah - where did my ego go?) so here are a couple that I wrote: The Bad Girl Song , and Your Fool, the title cut from my most recent album.
I hope these will provide you with a few pleasant distractions, albeit brief ones. Not to go too easy on the COVID-19, I’ll end with this quote from CS Lewis, that was recently published with the suggestion you replace the words “atomic bomb” with “coronavirus”. Obviously we have to employ a wholly different kind of carefulness for coronavirus than for an atomic bomb, but the sentiment really struck a chord for me:
“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
“In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
“This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
— “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays
We may be in this medical mess for quite awhile, so I hope you’ll practice smile therapy as often as possible, and I offer you this “anti-curse”: May you live WELL in interesting times.